Press Release MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN TO PRESENT ANNUAL VISIONARIES! AWARDS NOVEMBER 20, 2013 The Evening Will Honor Materialise CEO and Founder Wilfried Vancraen, Artist Frank Stella, Vilcek Foundation Executive Director Rick Kinsel, and Designers David and Sybil Yurman NEW YORK, NY (November 5, 2013) – On Wednesday, November 20, PRESS CONTACT 2013, the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) will host its 2013 Visionaries! Claire Laporte/Carnelia Garcia Gala, celebrating five influential creators and leaders in the art, craft, and Museum of Arts and Design design industries, whose work personifies the Museum’s mission to explore 212.299.7737 and celebrate contemporary creativity across all media: [email protected] • Wilfried Vancraen, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Materialise, an international additive manufacturing company started in Belgium. MAD PRESS RESOURCES For more than twenty years, Materialise has been working with image library designers and scientists to help expand design, manufacturing, and release as .pdf biomedical research into new frontiers, while remaining committed to artistic creativity, sustainability and the improvement of people’s lives. MAD LINKS • Frank Stella, legendary painter and printmaker, most noted for his Minimalist, Post-Painterly Abstract works has challenged ideas collections database of abstraction and of painting itself by negating the evidence of facebook brushwork and asserting the flatness of the canvas. Today, Stella youtube continues to explore new forms and aesthetic avenues in creating flickr multidimensional, hybrid sculptures that combine painting with twitter geometrical and architectural elements. • Rick Kinsel, Executive Director, The Vilcek Foundation. For more than 10 years, the Vilcek Foundation, under Kinsel's leadership, has been an important philanthropic supporter of the arts and sciences. It is committed to honoring the contributions of immigrants to American society and has founded several programs recognizing both emerging and established artists and designers. • David and Sybil Yurman, founders and creative directors of David Yurman, the brand and company, will be honored for their enduring contributions to the world of style internationally. David Yurman, long an innovator in the world of jewelry, will celebrate 30 years of its iconic cable design in 2014. Over the last three decades, David Yurman has created an indelible legacy of craftsmanship and innovation. This year’s Visionaries! Awards will celebrate MAD’s 5th anniversary at 2 Columbus Circle and the dramatic growth of the institution since its move, while looking ahead to an exciting roster of exhibitions and programs for 2013-2014. Since moving in 2008, MAD has welcomed more than a million visitors onsite, tripled its membership and greatly expanded its exhibition and educational offerings. Visionaries! is the Museum’s most important annual fundraiser supporting MAD’s exhibitions and educational programs. Every year the Gala honors leaders and innovators in the fields of art, design, philanthropy and business, who through their work demonstrate foresight, imagination, and a commitment to supporting creativity in all its forms. Proceeds are directed to the support of MAD’s Arts Education program. This year we expect to serve nearly 10,000 children, grades K–12, and from mostly underserved communities. Each year, more than 500 guests, including arts patrons, artists, designers and noted corporate and civic leaders attend the event. “MAD is thrilled to be honoring such a range of visionaries in this anniversary year, which demonstrates the scope and depth of MAD’s exploration of contemporary creativity,” said Lewis Kruger, Chairman of the Board of the Museum. “The outstanding achievements of this year’s honorees as leaders in varied creative fields are an inspiration to us all. Their work has moved and influenced many of us as museumgoers, the creative world at large, and aspiring artists and makers, and will continue to do so for generations to come.” Held this year at the Mandarin Oriental, Visionaries! will begin with a cocktail reception and silent auction featuring work by artists who have been represented in recent exhibitions at the Museum, as well as luxury goods, design items, travel getaways, and dining packages. Dinner and an awards presentation will follow. Opened in 2008, the Jerome and Simona Chazen Building at Columbus Circle has allowed MAD to advance its institutional vision and mission of celebrating the craftsmanship and creative processes of contemporary artists and designers from around the world. In the last five years, MAD has expanded its exhibitions program, underscoring contemporary creation and addressing the increasing cross-pollination of contemporary art, design, and craft. Among this programming is the exhibition Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital which features work by Frank Stella and from Materialise, as well as the "Materials and Process" exhibition series, which investigates how artists and craftspeople transform and approach specific materials as traditional as paper in Slash: Paper Under the Knife (2009) and wood in Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design (2013) to more unconventional ones such as everyday objects in Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary (2008) and organic materials that were once part of living things in Dead or Alive: Nature Becomes Art (2010). In that span of time, MAD has expanded its focus with the presentation of exhibitions that are international in scope—such as The Global Africa Project (2010) and the upcoming New Territories: Global Latin America (2014). Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital is the first in-depth survey dedicated to exploring the impact of computer-assisted methods of production on contemporary art, architecture, and design. Exploring the latest trends in digital fabrication, this landmark exhibition brings together more than 120 works of sculpture, jewelry, fashion, and furniture by 85 artists, architects, and designers from 20 countries to examine how new technologies are pushing the boundaries of artistic expression and creation. The cutting-edge works highlighted in the exhibition demonstrate the reciprocal relationship between art and technological innovation as well as materials and new techniques—an area of exploration that has long been at the core of MAD’s mission and curatorial program. Three works created using Materialise platforms are featured in the exhibition—Volume.MGX lamp by Dror Benshetrit, Platform Wertel Oberfell by Gernot Oberfell and Jan Wertel, and Bust of Lady Belhaven (after Samuel Joseph) by Stephen Jones—as well as two works by Frank Stella—K.179 and K.162 from The Scarlatti K Series. The MAD collection has also grown three-fold and in synergy with its mission, with important acquisitions that illustrate imaginative approaches to transforming materials. MAD has grown its educational and public programming to include Open Studios; K–12 programs like MADlab, Arts Reach, and Artslife; and film, performance, residencies, and talks. Its pioneering Open Studios have provided a meeting point for artists and museumgoers to converse, offering an educational space that fosters dialogue between artists, designers, and the public. Every day, the Open Studios host artists and designers as they produce their work in a public environment. The Open Studios program supports the development of original works through special projects and residencies. Meanwhile, MAD’s robust K–12 programming has set a new model and standard for American museums, maintaining its commitment to act as a teaching resource and providing in-depth, hands-on learning experiences to students in New York. Some of these programs include: MADlab, MAD’s signature school program that offers a tour and hands-on workshop in the Museum’s classrooms; Arts Reach, providing arts education to at-risk youth; and Artslife, MAD’s paid summer program for high school students. ABOUT THE HONOREES Wilfried Vancraen founded Materialise in July 1990. Vancraen holds a Master in electro-mechanical engineering and first discovered 3D printing while working as a research engineer and consultant at the Research Institute of the Belgian Metalworking Industry. His passion for this new technology and his belief that it could create products and improve lives fueled and became the mission for Materialise. For more than two decades, Materialise has worked with designers and scientists, using 3D printing, in order to further research and application in fields such as biomedicine, with face transplants, reconstructive bone procedures, and 3D medical imaging. The company also collaborates with top designers to create unique 3D-printed design objects, three of which are featured in MAD’s Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital exhibition, by Dror Benshetrit, Gernot Oberfell and Jan Wertel, and Stephen Jones. The company also works with design engineers to help improve consumer goods—from cellphone covers to luggage to pens—through customized 3D printed parts. Frank Stella is one of the leading figures of Post-Painterly Abstraction in the last century and a legendary artist and innovator in post-war and contemporary art. He paved the way for the Minimalist movement, painting canvases in a single primary color or layering them with hard-edged stripes and geometric shapes, at the height of the Pop art movement. Some of his most famous paintings include: The Black Paintings (1959–60), in which he penciled lines on raw canvases and filled